Month: June 2022

Enlarge / Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference on May 2, 2022 in Beverly Hills, California. (credit: Getty Images | Patrick T. Fallon )

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is laying off 18 percent of its staff, the company announced today. The layoffs will cut 1,100 workers at the largest crypto exchange in the US, leaving it with about 5,000 employees, Coinbase said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

"In the next hour every employee will receive an email from HR informing if you are affected or unaffected by this layoff," CEO Brian Armstrong wrote in a memo to staff that was posted on the company blog. Laid-off workers "will receive this notification in your personal email, because we made the decision to cut access to Coinbase systems for affected employees."

The immediate cutoff from Coinbase systems was necessary because of "the number of employees who have access to sensitive customer information," Armstrong wrote. This was "the only practical choice, to ensure not even a single person made a rash decision that harmed the business or themselves," he wrote.

Enlarge / The Sonos One. (credit: Jeff Dunn)

Sonos customers were left scratching their heads and double-checking their bank accounts after receiving more speakers than they ordered. Some users were reportedly charged for the extra speakers that they received but never ordered.

The Verge on Monday said it spoke to one Sonos customer who "placed an order for a single Sonos Move and received three." Another was "charged over $2,000 after ordering one Move speaker and receiving a total of seven."

Reports of the accidental shipments first surfaced on Reddit, where customers have been discussing receiving and/or being charged for as many as five Sonos Ray, Sub, Arc, Move, or Roam speakers that they didn't order. One person claimed the extra speakers were rerouted before being received but after the charge went through.

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  Even in its early build, Diablo IV looks to be an atmospheric stunner. This gallery is full of game imagery. [credit: Blizzard ]

Blizzard has confirmed that the upcoming Diablo IV won't feature the kinds of game-altering microtransactions that have proved so controversial in the recently released Diablo Immortal.

Back in 2019, shortly after Diablo IV was first announced, Blizzard lead designer Joe Shely said that Blizzard "would not sell power" in the game. Instead, you'll be able to "acquire cosmetics" via microtransactions, he said, while adding at the time that "it's very early" in the game's development.

Some players worried if those Diablo IV plans were still operational, though, given Diablo Immortal's wide variety of in-game currencies and gameplay-altering purchase options that have gotten the game effectively banned in two European countries.

Enlarge / The 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro. (credit: Apple)

Apple's all-new MacBook Air design got most of the attention at WWDC last week, but you won't be able to buy one until next month. In the meantime, Apple's other, less-interesting M2-equipped laptop, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, will be available for preorder starting on Friday, June 17, the company announced today. The laptop will begin arriving (and will show up in Apple's stores) on June 24.

The laptop's main improvement is the M2 chip, which, according to Apple, features 18 percent faster CPU performance and up to 35 percent faster GPU performance than the M1 (in the version with the 10-core GPU). The M2 also features improved video encoding and decoding capabilities, with a ProRes video engine and decoding support for multiple 4K and 8K video streams.

The M2 also supports up to 24GB of memory, up from a maximum of 16GB for the M1. But like the M1, the M2 chip only supports a maximum of two displays—the laptop's internal screen and one external monitor at up to 6K. If you need to attach multiple monitors to your Mac, you'll need the M1 Pro and Max chips in the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros.